When I was a junior in high school. I had a very dear friend of mine. His name was Jake. And he was he was he was the closest friend I'd ever had in my life leading up to that moment. He he was part mischievous and yet also part caring. And he was amazing. The mischievous piece was maybe my favorite part because I am not part mischievous. I am all mischievous. And as a 17 year old kid didn't know Jesus didn't grow up in the church. None of you know I just I like my moral standard was basically like ground level, right? Like anything was free game. And Jake, because of his willingness to be a little mischievous was like my partner, right? He was like my Robin, but for back bad things like Batman and Robin, but like a negative version of it. Right? And this one time I remember we in 2005 there were these little mini motorcycles that like became super popular. They were kind of like the the what are they called the things that people would get on they'd like do these things like hoverboard surfboard things that blow up now. So you can't actually buy them like Amazon SES those because they were going in flames. Thank you. Chinese imports for that one. But in 2005, before that was the cool thing. There were many motorcycles were the thing. And these are they were like this big, but they were like, they were like a motorcycle. And and they went 35 miles an hour. Which if you think about it, that's fast. Like that's like, wow, they got some pretty good speed. And so Jake and I we bought them we bought them on eBay, and they got delivered and that's when people did eBay stuff. And so we didn't know if we were buying from a shady dealer, you know, who knows, right? But we wanted these motorcycles. They were 500 bucks each. We bought them and little did we know that one? They were illegal in Colorado. We did not know that, too, even if they were legal. The requirements to be able to drive them was that you needed a license and you need them registered. Neither none of those things that we knew, like when we bought them at all, we just thought this would be fun, a lot more fun than riding our bicycles, right? And so we got him. And so we were riding around and I just I just remember this one time, we were driving around and just like blitzing through our neighborhood. And all of a sudden, this cop shows up out of nowhere, this board cop, just like sitting in a neighborhood like waiting for kids, right? Like that's, you know, just like eating the sandwich or something and hanging it. All we hear is this boom. And I looked at Jake. And he looked at me, and there was a definite connection of let's go. And we were like, you just were on motorcycles were like, we could beat this guy. 35 mile an hour motorcycles, right. But we went on a chase with the cop following us all throughout the neighborhood. And the way that we kept the cops from busting us is we would deceive the cops. I don't recommend doing any of what I'm saying right now. But we would literally like be like, Oh, can we wave and be like, Hey, we're gonna pull over and, and we'd pull up into a driveway. And the cop would then be like, All right, and he'd get out of his car. And then we'd go for all and then we drive away literally, to the point where we finally got to the local park, and we went straight through the park to his house and then hidden his basement. Wonderful, guys, friends like that. That's, you know what I'm saying? Right? It's incredible. You know, he's funny, he was mischievous. He was incredible. And he was also incredibly caring. As a young man, I dated this one girl when I my junior year and she was not a healthy person. For me, we brought the worst out and each other and, and Jake, while we weren't running from the police had made it his basically, life's goal to make sure that I was safe, that I wouldn't make dumb decisions. He was like a big old, he was an older brother to me. And so one time, he actually found out that I was I had gone over to my girlfriend's house, even though we had broken up and, and he knew I was going over there to just basically plead with her to stay with me, and it was not going to be good. And so we actually came over to the house that she lived her house, then jumped in through the basement window, because we kept the front door locked. He broke into it grabbed me and said, This is not good for you. And then he pulled me out the window. Afterwards, he punched me in the face. And I was like, Whoa, we're taking this a little too far. Right? Like I was like, Oh, Jake, come on, man. Like that's the type of friend who's who's fun. Like he was everything that you would want. And you know, parents, you want a kid like this minus the police stuff like you want, you know, for your kid, someone like that. Love that guy, man. always smiling, always having a good time. What I didn't know is that every day that we were together, which was almost every single day, when I thought things were great. underneath the surface, Jake was actually fighting for his life. I had no idea. We were 17. I had no idea. Looking back, it all made sense to me. Every summer, we'd go out and we'd have we just be done. And it's like 105 degrees outside in Colorado. And it's hot and it's humid. And we're running around on our motorcycles driving around. He always wears sweater. And I just never really I was like, well, you want a sweater bro? Like it's not even good. Like it's not even stylish man. It's a black sweater. And I had no idea that he was hiding all the scars of his cuts. Never once wear a t shirt around me. I had no idea that every time we went to his house, when we would skip out on school, it would happen a lot. We'd be like, let's go to gym class. And then we just leave and go to his house. We'd go to play Playstation. And every time we got to his house, his parents both work. So they weren't home. He would grab the PlayStation from his bedroom. And he'd bring it into the living room. And I always thought that was so strange. Like, why don't we just play in your bedroom. And, and the reason why he was doing that was because on the desk in his bedroom, he had a pre written suicide note. And he kept it there because he never knew if he was ever going to take his life or not. But he wanted to make sure that everything that he wanted to say was there. I had no idea. March of that year, was an English class. And my teacher pulled me out of class and that was not uncommon for me. And I just thought what again, Mrs. Daniels, like, oh, pronouns are pointless, right? Like, she brings me out. And she said, Hey, we want to let you know that Jake killed himself. And back then, in the mid 2000s, they there's like no real protocol for something like this. And teachers, you know, there wasn't a lot of training in this. And so the teacher told me and then they said, we just want to let you know. So take a deep breath and go back into class and Was it. And his parents found him and his home. He didn't come to school that day. And as a 17 year old, I remember sitting back in English class, and everything went silent. And I felt I felt devastated. And I lost the friends and that mattered. But I like I mean, you're 17 There's a weird cognitive thing that happens, where you're not quite able to process emotions fully, like you almost pacify them. But what hurt the most is I had no idea that my friend was fighting a battle that I was unaware of. I had no idea that he that there was a piece of life that I loved, that he didn't know how to live in. And he felt like there was a war going on in him. Um, 17 million people every single year are diagnosed with depression in the United States. 17 million people every single year. Depression is a very broad category. But that does not include social anxiety that does not include bipolar disorder. That doesn't include postpartum depression, that doesn't include seasonal depression, that is just chronic depression. 17,000,005% of the entire United States population deals with seasonal depression twice a year, every single year, at the very tail end of fall into winter. And right around March of every single year, 5% of the entire population has a biological reaction to weather and debates on if it's worth living life. Women are twice as likely to be depressed than men. And the onset of depression, or at least the average onset of depression for anybody is right around 32 years old. Some people can be depressed earlier. And that's why there's an average right? Usually it starts somewhere between 18 years old or so when social psych social pressure comes in. There's dissonance in the family in the home and, and there's a lot of trauma that comes up. And then some some people are diagnosed later in life. But right around that 32 year old age range is right when people begin to realize what is actually happening and they actually get diagnosed with this. But the saddest thing about all of these statistics is that only 20% of every person who is diagnosed with this disease, only 20% of those people actually seek any sort of professional help. Think about that. A legitimate physiological disease illness, only 20% of people seek professional help.